Thursday, January 05, 2006

Coverage...

Well a bitch had one crazy day yesterday. Not a lot of drama, but too much running around! Shit. My current state of blah didn’t help matters either…oh, and the fact that most people can’t read a bitch’s mood for shit added to that pile.

Fuck it all.

First, let a bitch say congratulations to the University of Texas Longhorns for hookin' 'em right good last night! Fantabulous! A bitch knows too many alums of U.T. to not get a wee bit misty at their victory. Gawd, can you imagine what a hot mess walking Jenna Bush was last night at the victory kegger? Mercy.Moving on…

Coverage…A bitch watched the initial coverage of the West Virginia mine explosion and subsequent rescue efforts with shock and dismay. Regardless of how everything turned out, this bitch simply felt sick over the herd of media folks camped out to capture every single fucking second of it.

Catch that knee before it jerks, Anonymous...a bitch isn't saying that events should not be covered. No, my ass is commenting on the coverage...on how that coverage impacts those being covered...on that fucking shit called emotions that no one factors in and no one wants to talk about lest they be confronted with some dumb assed auto-response about censorship. Cover it all...fuck it. My ass just couldn't help but think 'what if that was me'.

A bitch couldn’t help but think of my father’s death from a heart attack several years ago. The great phone call we had that morning, though he seemed tired. The phone call my ass received from the hospital later that day…your father has had a heart attack and is in bad shape…are you alone…you need to come to Chicago immediately. A bitch thought about the wait between the time my ass called my sister and the time she arrived back home….the chanting, was that in my head or did a bitch say it out loud…oh Jesus, oh Gawd, oh Lord, oh no. The sick feeling in the pit of my stomach when C-Money came through the door. The pathetic feeling of weakness when my ass stepped back and let her make that terrible call back to the hospital. The look on her face and the absolute all consuming denial sparked by her confirming the worst with those four fucking words…he didn’t make it.

And then this bitch thought about experiencing all of that shit with 200 news cameras stationed outside of my house…following us as we left to inform our mother that her former husband was dead…calling us for interviews while we struggled to locate our father’s new wife and tell her that her husband of less than two years was gone.

Covering...my loss, my pain, my tears, my family...over and over and over again.

There, but for the grace of Gawd and an editorial decision, go we all...

13 comments:

As far as I yet know, none of my family members still work at that particular mine, which makes my family fortunate. However, my family members who once worked there probably had colleagues that still work there and may possibly be facing the stone-faced spectre we call death.

It is for such reasons as you have mentioned that I despise "media dogs". But there again, it raised the question: where do you draw the line as to what is too much coverage and where does media ethics play into it?

Buried about halfway down in CNN.com's story on the "miscommunication" yesterday was a link titled "WATCH family members sob upon learning of deaths." Give me a fucking break. I'm sickened in equal parts by the fact that their suffering is being put on parade, and by the fact that the American public creates a market for that kind of crap.

Wow, ABB, you can sure say it. I can't imagine going through the GOOD parts of my life with media coverage, but something as horrible as losing a family member...you're right. It's too much. Sometimes I think it's a difference that (this is going to sound corny) breaks down to manners. Do we have the right to cover this? Yes. Do people need to know about it? Yes. Should we shove cameras into people's faces so we can know every emotion they are feeling? Hell no. It's rude. I know that's simplistic, but if we all did fewer things that are truly rude (as opposed to what fork to use or whatever), the world would be a hell of a lot less harsh.

See, I used to be a journalism major. Hell, I even interned at that (in)famous rap rag. And I stopped. I even gave up a scholarship, and as years go on and I ponder my decision, I am happy that I did.

This kind of stuff really hits hard. I don't want to see the families happy with false hope and I do not want to see them receive the bad news. It is voyeurism of the worst degree. And to think that these are the same shows that talk about the danger or porn on people, and they are peddling this kind of stuff around.

Positively sickening. The media and readers/viewers who support it have no sense of common decency whatsoever. A reporter can tell a story without being all up in everybody's grill. Everything -- EVERYTHING -- goes back to the Golden Rule: Do Unto Others.

On a lighter note, after you made me get misty...I can't wait till a sex tape of Jenna Bush emerges from the depths of some moldy basement. Something along the lines of Parasite Hilton's tribute to the world of porn. That's when I predict the gates of the Christian Right well open. All of their freaked out, dark and dirty secrets will exposed. I pray for this day......Really I do.

I lost my husband a shade over four years ago. My time span of torture was from my home to the drive to the hospital after the ambulance left my home. That was my time to myself. But I wasn't thinking the worst. My husband was disabled and sick but had tons of "close-calls". To arrive in the ER and have a nurse lead me into a room to have me wait for the doctor, I didn't think anything of it. Then I was told he didn't make it. I couldn't believe it. I thought the doctor meant the ambulance got lost (though I saw it in the parking lot). Then it was, "No, he's gone." That's the nanosecond when your world implodes. Take everyone emotion you ever had with that person and jam it into 1/1,000,000,000 of a second. Welcome to "instant shock". But I wasn't expecting it. I was expecting to bring him home in week. Instead, I buried him.

I couldn't even fathom what those poor family members went through in WVa. I mean, they sat and paced and waited and agonized and pondered and prayed and cussed and all of it was caught on tape for the rest of the media-sucking ghouls to see live or on the net. But we can't blame the media entirely for this twisted invasion of privacy. Practically everyone in the world with access to the news wants to see or hear a good tragedy. I mean, we see it everyday at accident scenes on the highway. Almost everyone slows down at accident scenes to see if they catch a glimpse of whatever. The media knows this. They supply 'cause many demand. Still, just because they can reason with it doesn't make it right.

Quite right you are. Having the media parade a family's pain in front of a national audience in the name of journalism is sick. I don't think they take into consideration how they would feel if it were them. Not to mention having to hear once through the media that your loved one is fine, only to hear hours later that it was a miscommunication and the person you love is more than likely dead. Damn, just thinking about it makes me upset.

And umm, I thought I was the only one who had issues with Annonymous and his/her comments. I feel much better that the harrassment extends to others.